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joeyroo 's review for:
Dancer from the Dance: A Novel
by Andrew Holleran, Andrew Holleran
oh wow-- what a surprise, what a heartache.
there are so many angles from which i want to see this story and how it's told. in some sense, i feel this world is meant to be part of my cultural ancestry: the book is about (mostly) single gay men in 1970s new york. Their habits end up carving out the very pillars of city Gay Life, whose vestiges still flurry around my world today, though now these spaces seem to be drained of their original meaning by moneyed gays and a thirst for exclusivity. other things were humbling to read about: cruising and the need for hidden sex, estranged families, single-use poppers (which, yes, actually used to pop!).
parts of gay culture that i'd long assumed to be partial reactions to the AIDS crisis — drug problems, a striving for excellence, body fascism — are already established in this book, written years before the epidemic. the high-octane, highly competitive nature of sex and beauty has been around a long while, it seems. some of the more shocking quotes on this matter include 'For if anything is prized more in the homosexual subculture than a handsome face, or a large cock, it is a well-defined, athletic body', 'What is so incredible about homosexuals is that, if they live as homosexuals (that is to say, as women: beings whose life consists chiefly of Being Attractive to others)', and then there's another about guys with small dicks being 'lepers' in the gay community. the very idea that a group of men that was so oppressed and forced into hiding could create such hierarchies should give us pause-- there has been no push to heal from these ideas, only their reinforcement through a lighting-fast metamorphosis of societal acceptance and the accumulation of capital. what may have once been only petty judgements on a small scale now manifest as unapologetically cynical structures of social power.
but still, this book is well aware of how this culture is ultimately a fabrication of the mind:
'i used to say there were only seventeen homosexuals in new york, and we knew every one of them; but there were tons of men in that city who weren't on the circuit, who didn't dance, didn't cruise, didn't fall in love with Malone, who stayed home and went to the country in the summer. we never saw them. we were addicted to something else'
in the end, this book is about searching for love and purpose. these things are hard to find; hard to find in this city; hard to find as a gay man, even if you’re gorgeous and perfect like our protagonist, Malone. and so maybe it asks the question of how we’re to react to this sense of incompleteness: dancing instead of sleeping? swallowing strange drugs? fixating on our beauty? this story connects to me on a level that is more profound than so much of modern gay literature because it humbly concedes that maybe making ourselves happy is harder than we thought.
there are so many angles from which i want to see this story and how it's told. in some sense, i feel this world is meant to be part of my cultural ancestry: the book is about (mostly) single gay men in 1970s new york. Their habits end up carving out the very pillars of city Gay Life, whose vestiges still flurry around my world today, though now these spaces seem to be drained of their original meaning by moneyed gays and a thirst for exclusivity. other things were humbling to read about: cruising and the need for hidden sex, estranged families, single-use poppers (which, yes, actually used to pop!).
parts of gay culture that i'd long assumed to be partial reactions to the AIDS crisis — drug problems, a striving for excellence, body fascism — are already established in this book, written years before the epidemic. the high-octane, highly competitive nature of sex and beauty has been around a long while, it seems. some of the more shocking quotes on this matter include 'For if anything is prized more in the homosexual subculture than a handsome face, or a large cock, it is a well-defined, athletic body', 'What is so incredible about homosexuals is that, if they live as homosexuals (that is to say, as women: beings whose life consists chiefly of Being Attractive to others)', and then there's another about guys with small dicks being 'lepers' in the gay community. the very idea that a group of men that was so oppressed and forced into hiding could create such hierarchies should give us pause-- there has been no push to heal from these ideas, only their reinforcement through a lighting-fast metamorphosis of societal acceptance and the accumulation of capital. what may have once been only petty judgements on a small scale now manifest as unapologetically cynical structures of social power.
but still, this book is well aware of how this culture is ultimately a fabrication of the mind:
'i used to say there were only seventeen homosexuals in new york, and we knew every one of them; but there were tons of men in that city who weren't on the circuit, who didn't dance, didn't cruise, didn't fall in love with Malone, who stayed home and went to the country in the summer. we never saw them. we were addicted to something else'
in the end, this book is about searching for love and purpose. these things are hard to find; hard to find in this city; hard to find as a gay man, even if you’re gorgeous and perfect like our protagonist, Malone. and so maybe it asks the question of how we’re to react to this sense of incompleteness: dancing instead of sleeping? swallowing strange drugs? fixating on our beauty? this story connects to me on a level that is more profound than so much of modern gay literature because it humbly concedes that maybe making ourselves happy is harder than we thought.